This killer trick will charge your iPhone 6 in half the time

The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are the biggest iPhones yet. But that comes with a drawback: Since they have bigger batteries than any iPhone ever, they also take longer to charge.

But here’s a killer trick. You can use a 12-watt iPad charger to juice up the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in half the time when compared to the 5-watt iPhone charger your device ships with by default.

That might seem like a no-brainer, but believe it or not, this didn’t work with previous iPhones. If you plugged an iPhone into a 12-watt charger, it would charge at only 5 watts, leading to much slower charge times.

Batteries are complicated, but think of charging a battery like filling up a water balloon. When you’re trying to fill a balloon as fast as possible, it doesn’t matter how fast your hose can spray water if the mouth of the balloon is too small to let it all through.

That’s, in essence, what was happening with old iPhones. The battery just couldn’t suck up electricity as fast as a 12-watt charger was squirting it in. But with the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, that’s no longer a problem: They’ll suck up electricity as fast as your charger can squirt it.